For many of us, simply thinking of leg warmers might resurrect memories of the 80s, the movie Fame, or any number of dance class moments we experienced personally. Maybe you never experienced the 80s or have no idea what leg warmers are.
Improving transitions and technique is something that every Acro dancer can make improvements on, even when they’re at home. You don’t have to be an expert to be able to notice when their transitions aren’t as smooth as they could be, or to notice that how they’re doing it doesn’t reflect good technique. Sometimes Acro dancers get overly focused on what they’re doing, instead of how they’re doing it. That’s where you come in!
Waacking is a style associated with street and hip hop dance that is characterized by intricate fast arm movements and vogues or freezes. Much of the movement originates in the shoulders and some moves look similar to a person dancing with invisible nun chucks.
Voguing is a style of dance, fashion, and subculture that originated in Harlem, New York, developing between 1960-1980, evolving from drag competitions and pageantry balls within the Affrican-American and Latinx LGBTQ communities.
Popping is considered to be one of the original Hip Hop dance styles and has come to describe a variety of movement types. Underneath the giant umbrella term that is Popping, there are many different sub-styles and off-shoots, and what is considered definitively to be popping is still being debated.
Locking emerged from the West Coast in the 1970s, and was created by Don Campbell. This style of dance is usually performed to funk music, and the movement is characterized by locks, wrist rolls, Uncle Sam points, high fives, the hambone, The Scooby Doo, Scooby Walk, Scoobot, and sudden stops inside fluid grooves.
Krump is a style of street dance affiliated with Hip Hop that began in Los Angeles in the early 2000s, and is known for it’s intense rawness and controlled power, giving it an aggressive and almost combative appearance.
Breaking/Bboying/Bgirling is a form of street dance that was born from the Bronx, New York in the 1970s, and is the first original form of Hip Hop dance. The B in Bboying/Bgirling is said to refer to the breakdowns or breakbeats that the dancers would go off to. DJ Kool Herc would lengthen these sections by using two records of the same song, so he could loop the breakdown portion giving the dancers more time to do their thing.
Failure or rejection as a young dancer can feel so all-encompassing and life-altering. What are some ways we can help motivate our dancers after rejection?
With the increasing amount of Acro-related skills and tricks packed into mainstream competitive dance shows and competitions, it can be confusing for people to understand what differentiates an Acro dance routine from a dance routine of another genre that has Acro moves in it.